


one little hint, that's all we ask

by couldaughter



Series: creatures that i briefly move along (teacher!jon au) [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Curiosity, Gen, Minor Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Primary School, Teacher Jon, Twenty questions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25075558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/couldaughter/pseuds/couldaughter
Summary: “Have you done any crimes Mr Sims?”Mr Sims paused. He seemed genuinely conflicted about how to answer for a moment, before he sighed and said, “None that I’ve been convicted for.”
Series: creatures that i briefly move along (teacher!jon au) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1815988
Comments: 51
Kudos: 916
Collections: tma fics





	one little hint, that's all we ask

**Author's Note:**

> back at it again at teacher au kreme

Every Monday morning, Kayden was twenty minutes late. It wasn’t his fault, honestly — mum had a night shift so he had to get himself ready for school, and his big brother never woke him up in time, and since she couldn’t drive him in he had to walk and he could never leave in time to get to school before the bell.

Miss Grant wasn’t very nice about it, but Kayden hadn’t told her about mum’s night shift, or dad losing his job and having to work two of them now for less money, so he figured she was just assuming he was lazy. It wasn’t like he _couldn’t_ be lazy — that was half his brand in the class — but it did sting a little bit when she just sighed and told him to sit down before she wrote him down in her late book.

This Monday he got in at ten past nine, a personal record, by running all the way up the hill to the main gate and hammering the office intercom as fast as he could. Mr Hines in the office just nodded and put him in as late on SIMS while he speed-walked down the hall to the classroom.

He knocked on the door and waited, bouncing on the balls of his feet. If he was quick enough he’d get to join in with Twenty Questions later, instead of having to sit out with Mr Lowry the teaching assistant and catch up on his morning work. Mr Sims frowned when Miss Grant told him about that rule, but he hadn’t argued. Kayden guessed it was tricky being a teacher when Miss Grant was kind of your teacher as well.

The questions were a new thing. Mr Sims was teaching them all the time now, and sometimes Miss Grant left him in the classroom with them so she could go do boring teacher stuff like… filing, or reading or something. Kayden wasn’t really clear. But anyway, whenever Miss Grant left the room, Mr Sims would let them have a round of Twenty Questions.

It started sort of normal. There were ten spare minutes before break, when everyone had finished their maths challenge and were just starting to get rowdy. Kayden remembered because he’d been pretty involved in the rowdiness.

“Alright,” said Mr Sims, voice cutting clear through the rising noise. He was good at that. It was like you couldn’t help but listen to him. “Let’s… let’s play a game.”

Anna stuck her hand up straight away. Kayden rolled his eyes. Anna had been cool back when they were babies but these days she was all about being friends with _everyone_. Kayden didn’t know how that would even work. People were different — why should they all have to be friends?

Mr Sims nodded at Anna. That was another thing — when he didn’t have to say something, Mr Sims wouldn’t. Kayden had got a lot of mileage out of him back when he first started, when he could get him to go on a tangent about almost anything with a question or two about the Romans. Nowadays Mr Sims was on his guard against diversion tactics, and he never asked a question when a look would do.

“Can we play Fish Fingers?” Anna asked, to a chorus of groans. 

Azaan sighed loudly. “You only want to play that because you always win!”

“Sore loser,” Anna replied.

Mr Sims coughed. “No, I don’t think we’ll play Fish Fingers today. It starts far too many fights. No, I thought we could play a round of Twenty Questions. Miss Grant tells me that you’ve all been… let’s say very curious about my life outside of school.”

Kayden sat up straighter. He was absolutely interested in finding out more about Mr Sims. Even not counting when he made Kayden tell the truth just by _asking_ him, he’d seen him in the shop the weekend before wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and he _definitely_ saw a big slash mark on his neck. He’d asked his dad about it, and he’d just told Kayden to mind his own business.

That was something Kayden found pretty difficult.

Mr Sims explained the rules while Kayden tried to come up with the best possible question. Apparently it was yes and no questions only, which was trickier than Kayden thought it would be.

Marcus leaned over. He sat behind Kayden, but they were both chair-swingers so they got a lot of opportunities to whisper-chat. “What d’you think? I’m gonna ask if he likes video games.”

“Nah,” said Kayden, knowledgably. “He doesn’t even play Fortnite, remember?”

“Aw, I forgot,” Marcus said, looking a bit downtrodden. “I’ll think of something.”

They turned back to their tables and got to thinking. Mr Sims had said they’d get two minutes to come up with one question each, and then if they had time he’d answer all of them. He _said_ nothing was off limits, but Kayden knew where the boundaries would be. 

The sand timer emptied out, and everyone’s hands went right up. Mr Sims grinned, almost on reflex, and then visibly straightened his face out. That was something weird about Mr Sims, actually. He never wanted to seem happy for too long. It was obvious when he _was_ , but he didn’t like them knowing about it.

“Prachi,” said Mr Sims, pulling a lollipop stick out of the seldom-used pot on Miss Grant’s desk. Everyone put their hands down with a sad sigh. Lollipop sticks were so _boring._

Prachi smiled sunnily. “Are you really married Mr Sims? ‘Cause you said you were and then you never mentioned it again, were you joking?”

Mr Sims looked like he wanted to laugh. The lines around his eyes were a bit deeper than normal. “Yes, I’m married. No, it wasn’t a joke.” He paused. “That was two questions. Should I put two tally marks down, or should I be nice?”

The class, collectively, wailed. 

Mr Sims put one tally mark down on the board and moved back to the lollipop pot. 

Five questions went by before Kayden’s stick got pulled, so he knew a lot about whether Mr Sims had a pet (yes), if he had brothers (no) or sisters (no), if he liked football (no, but I have been made to watch it under duress) and if he was really old (“What?” “You know like the Queen?” “Um, I’m younger than the queen.”), but no one had asked what Kayden wanted to know.

“Have you done any crimes Mr Sims?”

Mr Sims paused. He seemed genuinely conflicted about how to answer for a moment, before he sighed and said, “None that I’ve been convicted for.”

And then the bell rang for break, and he slipped on his hi-vis and escaped onto break duty. Kayden barely had time to push his chair back and vault over the lunchbox trolley before Mr Sims was out the door. It was impressive how fast he could go considering he had his walking stick to help him.

That was the first round of Twenty Questions. The second one had turned into a heated debate after Mr Sims told them that he would answer one, and only one, open question. Lily had won that one with ‘What’s your husband called?’, to which Mr Sims smiled and said, “Martin.” It was a hugely normal name for someone to have, which made it feel even weirder that Martin had married _Mr Sims_ , who’d once stopped reading a chapter of their class book to comment on how scary falling from a great height was, and made Mr Sims smile like that just to think about.

Kayden really didn’t get grownups.

But that Monday morning, when Mr Sims opened the classroom door and waved Kayden in with a quiet, “Alright, Kayden?”, Twenty Questions was a little different.

“Our English lessons this week will be about how to write a newspaper report using direct speech,” said Mr Sims, once everyone was sitting down and their handwriting books were away. He got everyone to explain direct speech to each other, then they had to go through a newspaper article and find all the key features. Kayden got halfway through then just copied the rest off Marcus, who was more into all the non-fiction stuff. Kayden liked school fine, and he liked learning, but underlining features wasn’t exactly PE, was it?

After that was finally over, Mr Sims clapped them back in and waited for silence.

“Alright,” he said. “Here’s what Miss Grant tells me is the ‘fun’ part of the lesson.” He crooked his fingers around the word ‘fun’, like he wanted as much distance between it and himself as possible. “Since you’ll be reporting using direct speech, you’ll need some real words to use as a reference, and Miss Grant has decided that I would be the perfect interview candidate.”

Kayden looked up from where he’d been playing with a calculator under the table. Mr Sims had told him he was allowed to, but only if he’d promise to listen as hard as he could when he was explaining what to do.

“So,” he continued, glancing around the classroom. Everyone was sitting up straight. “This session of Twenty Questions is all open questions, but you only get one question per table. Choose wisely.”

And then he sat down at the desk, and everyone looked at each other in slightly disbelieving silence for a second before the plotting began.

Kayden threw himself into it. His table for English was pretty cool, him and Marcus and Shaun all along one side of the table. Miss Grant had made them promise over and over to be good, and they were… mostly. Sometimes it was hard to behave.

They came up with a good one, by the time the timer started beeping. Miss Grant had taught Mr Sims how to do it, after she realised he was still using the sand timer for everything.

“Has everyone agreed?” He asked, glancing around to check for any dissent. Kayden nodded along with the rest of the class and tried not to get distracted by the way Mr Sims’ plait bounced when he nodded back. “Great,” said Mr Sims, in a tone which implied that things were not really all that great. 

Red table went first. Anna was the spokesperson, because she always was. “What pets do you have, Mr Sims?” She asked it like she was on Newsround or something, which Kayden thought was a bit much.

“Oh,” said Mr Sims, sounding pleased. He ran a hand through his hair and straightened his glasses. “I have two cats called The Commodore and Splodge, and a timeshare on a third cat called The Admiral. She belongs to one of my friends, so I get to visit her a lot.”

Everyone spent a few minutes writing that down. They were practicing note-taking as well as non-fiction writing. Kayden liked doing his in bullet points, because it meant he didn’t have to do full sentences.

He got to go second for questions, which was good because he really didn’t want anyone to steal his table’s idea. He stood up, because Anna had, and cleared his throat. “What did that to your face? It looks like it hurt.”

“It did,” said Mr Sims. He scratched at the side of his face, where all the small pale circles clustered together. There were some really close to his eye. “The last place I worked had a worm infestation.”

“ _Worms_ can do that?” shrieked Prachi, echoing the thoughts of everyone in the class.

“Not an earthworm,” Mr Sims said, apparently trying to calm things down. “It was… a very unusual kind of worm. Luckily Martin helped get them out before the ambulance arrived.”

The notes on that were furiously taken as he spoke. Kayden could see Marcus writing WORMS!!!!!! over three lines.

“Oh,” said Kayden, feeling oddly squirmy in his stomach, like he had when he broke the controller for his big brother’s XBox and didn’t own up to it for weeks. “It’s good you’re okay now, Mr Sims.”

“Yes, Kayden, I agree,” said Mr Sims. He smiled, and turned to the clock. “We’re out of time for this lesson. We can finish up in tomorrow’s lesson, alright? Myself and Miss Grant will be out this afternoon, so no cheating and trying to get answers out of me in advance.”

He let them out for lunch table by table, and when everyone had gone, Kayden lingered outside the door. Mr Sims got his mobile out of the desk drawer and looked at the lock screen. Kayden couldn’t see it from his angle, but it definitely cheered Mr Sims up. Then he unlocked it, and pressed the call button, and smiled at the keyboard as he said, “Hello, Martin.”

Kayden went to lunch. He really didn’t need any of that sappy stuff; he got enough of it from mum and dad at home. Grown-ups were so embarrassing.

**Author's Note:**

> yes the most commonly used register, attendance and other school organisation software is called SIMS. i only realised the irony potential after i dropped it in for some local colour
> 
> i've used twenty questions with classes before but usually about fictional characters. it's good for developing closed questioning skills and also wasting time when you've under-planned a lesson #insidetheteachersmind. i wouldn't do it for facts about myself but that's mostly because i already share a lot about my family as a baseline.
> 
> probably the last fic with this class so tragically i cannot make the joke i wanted to about there being an amelia, emilia, emily, millie and molly as well as a theo, thea, leo and cleo (these have both happened to me). jon remembers all their names perfectly even though emily and amelia are identical twins
> 
> title from 'why must we go to school?' by allan ahlberg, my personal hero apparently based on how many fics i have titled from his poetry
> 
> series title from 'subject to change' by marilyn l taylor
> 
> twitter/tumblr @dotsayers. PLEASE talk 2 me about teacher jon, i am bursting at the seams


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